Professor Gregory Germain spoke with Bloomberg on the president’s recent court hearing to have the New York jury verdict in the hush money case dismissed. Trump’s goal has been to get the case out of state court and into federal court.
“That’s clearly what he’s trying to do, but the question is whether they’re going to let him do it,” said Germain. “He wants to get it out of the state system, that’s his goal.”
Crandall Melvin Professor of Law Shubha Ghosh spoke with the BBC about the lawsuit brought by Disney and Universal against artificial intelligence (AI) company Midjourney.
“A lot of the images that Midjourney produces just seem to be copies of copyrighted characters that might be in new locations or with a new background,” says Ghosh, director of the Syracuse Intellectual Property Law Institute.
“It doesn’t seem like they’re being transformed in a creative or imaginative way.”
He added that there is a recognition in copyright law that creativity can build on other works as long as it adds something new.
Professor of Law Emeritus William C. Banks has discussed the deployment of the National Guard and Marines with several media outlets. Banks is an expert in civil-military relations who wrote the book “Soldiers on the Homefront.”
Banks responded to questions from The Conversation about the historical and legal nature of President Trump deploying the National Guard and Marines to Los Angeles.
In response to a question about American military troops being used in the U.S., Banks says, “They can, but it is an extraordinary exercise of authority to use troops domestically. It has rarely been done in the U.S. as a way of responding to a civil disturbance. Congress has delegated that authority of deploying American troops domestically to the president in limited circumstances. Otherwise, the only authority is exercised by governors, who have control of the National Guard.”
Professor Emeritus William C. Banks Discusses the Posse Comitatus Act with NPR
Professor of Law Emeritus William C. Banks spoke with Up First From NPR on the deployment of the military to Los Angeles. Banks discussed what the military can do as outlined in the Posse Comitatus Act.
“For sure, they can’t arrest. If the crowds are trying to push through them or throwing rocks at their face, they can protect themselves, but they can’t enforce the law,” says Banks.
He speaks at 3:25 of the audio clip.
Professor Banks spoke with the San Francisco Chronicle for the story, “DHS secretary seeks military arrests in Los Angeles in leaked letter.” “This is a grave escalation,” said Banks. “It may presage the invocation of the Insurrection Act.”
At KJZZ (Phoenix, AZ) Banks said, “The last time a president did something like this — that is to federalize the National Guard without the participation of a state governor — was in 1965,” when then-President Lyndon B. Johnson sent troops to protect Black civil rights activists from local authorities ahead of a voting rights march in Selma, Alabama.
The Latin Times “Kristi Noem Reportedly Requested Hegseth Direct Military To Make Arrests In Los Angeles: ‘A Grave Escalation'”.
The Straits Times “Trump flexes strongman instincts over Los Angeles protests”.
Professor Jenny Breen spoke with the Christian Science Monitor about a provision in the Trump budget bill that no federal court “may use appropriated funds” to enforce a contempt-of-court citation for failing to comply with an injunction or temporary restraining order “if no security was given when the injunction or order was issued.”
“What Congress is trying to do here is ease the way for the administration to ignore court orders,” says Breen. “Our system requires each branch to step up and check the other branch, and this bill just broadcasts that Congress is not interested in doing that for this president.”
Professor Gregory Germain spoke with the New York Law Journal about a recently introduced New York State bill that would ensure the state wouldn’t recognize pro bono work “resulting from the Trump Administration’s unlawful extortion of private law firms and attack on the practice of law.”
“The bill does not restrict the provision of pro bono work. It only restricts using the hours spent on pro bono work directed by the federal government for pro bono bar credit,” Germain said. “It’s very hard to know what pro bono work the federal government will direct law firms to perform. It’s very possible that some of the pro bono work directed by the federal government would be traditional pro bono work on behalf of the poor, for example. So the legislation might be over-inclusive.”
The full article may be behind a paywall.
Professor of Law Emeritus William C. Banks provided historical background for an article on the Alien Enemies Act in The Telegraph. President Trump has indicated the law’s use for the deportation of immigrants.
For Banks, using the act sent a powerful message to voters.
“The language of the legislation uses the term invasion, and another term, predatory incursion,” he told The Telegraph
“That sounds like language that strikes fear into the hearts of Americans and so on. So it served a very powerful rhetorical purpose when he gave his inaugural address on January 20, and then in a series of executive orders that he promulgated on that day and then several days afterwards,” he said.
“Legally, it has almost certainly no application to the circumstances that the United States now finds itself in. It was written, as you probably have learnt, in the 1790s in anticipation of what was feared to be a coming war with France,” said Banks.
University Professor David Driesen spoke with Mother Jones for an extensive article on the “unitary executive” theory.
“The unitary executive theory is a pathway to autocracy,” says Driesen, whose 2021 book, The Specter of Dictatorship, details the dangers of centralizing power in a single leader. “In every functional democracy I’m aware of, there is a civil service that can’t be easily fired, and there also are pockets in the government where even the top levels are somewhat independent of the head of state.”
In countries like Poland, Hungary, and Turkey, which have all recently experienced democratic backsliding, Driesen says civil service purges were an early step in the project of replacing the rule of law with autocracy. “The unitary executive theory is important,” he says, because it “legitimates this kind of thing in the minds of the elite.”
“The vision of the founding is that the president was to faithfully execute the law. That’s what the Constitution says,” says Driesen. “That’s what the rule of law is all about.”
Professor of Law Gregory Germain spoke with The Guardian for the story “Judge cautions prosecutors in healthcare exec murder trial to refrain from public comments.” The Judge in Luigi Mangione’s murder trial recently pointed prosecutors to a district court policy barring lawyers on both sides from making “public commentary that could impede Mr. Mangione’s right to a fair trial”.
It is hard to say exactly when out-of-court statements by public figures might have an impact.
“The rules are vague enough that it’s hard to know when they cross the line,” said Germain.
“What the judge did is what judges usually do if they think they’re getting close to the line: they admonish them and remind them of their obligation,” he said. “They hope then that the prosecutors will behave themselves and not try the case in front of the public, but try the case in the court and not impair the defendant’s right to a fair trial.”
Crandall Melvin Professor of Law Shubha Ghosh recently spoke with CNET for the story “FTC Sues Over Uber One, Saying It ‘Deceived Consumers’.” At issue are customers who sign up for free trials but are charged for services after the subscription is canceled.
“Very likely there will be more suits as the FTC, across administrations, seeks to address anticompetitive practices that harm consumers, especially practices that raise prices and limit consumer choices,” Ghosh told CNET. “Ticketmaster is one example. We may see actions against crypto and payday loans online.”
But don’t expect rewards from these FTC lawsuits if you feel you were taken advantage of by a subscription-based service. For customers, it’s not the same as a class action suit in which plaintiffs may get money from court-designated damages, Ghosh said.
“The FTC cannot recover restitution for consumers after the Supreme Court’s unanimous decision in [a 2021 case involving] AMG Management,” he said. “The FTC can change business practices, however, through injunctive relief under the Federal Trade Commission Act. The FTC can also obtain refunds for violations of the Fair Credit Reporting Act and the (Better Online Ticket Sales) Act.”
Professor Katherine Macfarlane, Director of the Disability Law and Policy Program, spoke with Law360 for the article “3 Takeaways After ADA Suit Over High Heels Cleared For Trial”.
The case revolves around a disability discrimination lawsuit by a fired cocktail waitress who’d asked to wear comfortable black shoes to work instead of the required high heels.
One takeaway was to keep essential job functions gender-neutral when possible. Macfarlane said it depends on the job, and how the employer defines what it considers an essential function.
“With a cheerleading uniform, you could say that you want to have everyone in the same thing, you want to be able to maximize what is most attractive,” she said, in an example of an all-woman professional cheer squad. “But we’re far afield from that … this is a job where people are supposed to be able to deliver drinks quickly.”
In fact, Macfarlane continued, she might argue that high heels could be a liability in a work environment that depends on speed and carrying heavy trays of food or drink.
The idea that the black high heels are an essential function of the work of cocktail servers at this company “should have been interrogated,” she said.
Another takeaway was that granting an accommodation may be the easiest solution, even as the ADA doesn’t actually require workers to produce a doctor’s note at all — let alone produce a note containing specific prescriptive language for a certain brand of shoes — in order for them to wear what works best for them.
“The interactive process is supposed to be flexible, and a conversation. If you can defer to the employee’s preference, you should,” she said. “There’s something really irrational and punitive about the way this came down, because the easy solution is, ‘Of course, you can wear your Skechers. Thank you for letting me know.’ Move on.”
She said it’s a bad human resources decision that led to lawyers on both sides “because someone wants to wear black Skechers.”
